A purple tank top, blue jeans, and black boots with a black trench-coat, Sherlock style, to go along with it. Catalina stood at the counter of the Pendleton Street Starbucks, waiting patiently for Myles to talk things through with Lust. She was sitting on the dishwasher and kicking her legs, nearly hitting Myles with her mint TOMS.
“Don’t ask her,” Myles tried to confirm.
“Ask her.”
“But you said not to and now you’re saying to.”
“I’m also saying you need to push up your glasses but you can see perfectly fine. Don’t ask her.”
“You’re insufferable,” he said, finally turning to face the beautiful waitress. He smiled and tilted his head a bit, setting his palms onto the counter. “And how may I help you today, Catalina Touch from Paper Soldiers?”
“Well, Myles from Starbucks, I’d like a vanilla bean latte. Can ya handle?”
“I most certainly can,” he laughed. He turned about and got to work while she watched. “My last name,” he said.
“Hm?” she intended to know, for he knew hers.
“O’Connor. Irish blood, Irish name.”
“Also explains the ginger hair,” she pointed out. She giggled and he laughed, Lust giving the girl an evil glare.
“She looks like a-”
“Don’t you dare say anything about her,” Myles seethed, snapping his attention to the girl upon the dishwasher. Catalina backed away from the counter a bit, going wide-eyed. “She’s perfect. Get over it.”
“I’m what?”
Myles took a sharp breath in and looked back to his doing, then bit down on his lip. Great. She heard them. Well, she heard him, and his words made her ask. And even she asked again.
“I’m… what?”
“He said you’re perfect!” Lust yelled, making him cringe. He finished up her drink and picked up the Sharpie from the end counter, writing on the cup, 555-1692, and handing it to her. She took her drink from him and nodded, walking out and pulling her collar up against the wind.
“That was the sliest way to ask someone out. Giving them your number on a Starbucks cup. Pure and utterly gentleman-like, Myles. Good job.”
“Screw off,” he hissed. “You made me embarrass myself in front of her.”
“That’s only because you decided to be an idiot and respond to me.” He looked down to his hands and then over to her, seeing her continue her leg-kicking.
“Why-”
“Bass said that we needed to listen to him more, and Divide said we needed to calm down. He said that Jacob and Eli said we needed to.” She watched him walk to the ice machine and wipe off the grate, realizing he wasn’t really listening to him.
“Hey, there,” she said, grabbing his attention. He wasn’t an other, so why would she say that? Make him feel as if he was invisible to the world? He turned to look to her and forced a grin, pissed beyond belief. He rose his arms, a shrug in his shoulders, and bit on the inside of his cheek
“What the hell do you think is so important to tell me when I’m trying to get you away from me? You’re making me mad! You know what you have to do; listen to Bass, ignore Divide in bad moods, and not fuck with my mind!”
She stared at him, mouth ajar and eyes red with the tears that were about to spill out and down her cheeks. She exhaled with a scoff, looking away and letting her lips curl into a surprised and pained smile. She took a second to stare at the counter, then looked back up at him.
“You’re a real jerk sometimes, ya know?” she asked, then fading away without another word. He sighed, letting his arms fall defeatedly. It didn’t help that Missy was staring angrily at him. He looked away, out the window, to see Eli and Jacob walk into the American Apparel and turn on the lights. Opening shift: 9 AM, Thursday morning. Usually someone else opened on Thursdays, not the Holtmans.
“You’re closing tonight, freak,” Missy growled. Myles nodded, taking off his apron. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” she yelled, walking out from the back and towards him. He gasped, then jumped over the counter with a bound of unbelievable strength. He fell into the tile, Missy taking her fatty time to run around the counter to try and grab him before he scrambled to his feet and ran out of the Starbucks, into the wind, and to his car parked down the street.
Fumbling in the cold without his jacket, Myles shoved the key into the lock and turned it, seeing Bass playing with his beanie in the passenger seat. The green-eyed man looked over to him and frowned, watching Myles pull open the car door with anger driven into his face with a stake and a wooden hammer.
Myles sat down in his seat and shut the door harshly, looking at Bass with tears in his eyes. He put his hands upon the wheel and looked to the brick wall he was parked in front of. A wall with cracks in the bricks, a bit of graffiti still not washed off, and a piece of chewed gum stuck to it. “Myles?” he heard Bass ask worriedly. He instead ignored him and let out a soft whimper, crying into the wheel of his little Mazda 2002.
He drew a couple of quick breaths, settling his hands onto his lap and resting the side of his temple against the wheel to look over at Bass.
“You don’t look alright, Myles,” he sighed, putting a hand onto his shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”
Myles sucked his bottom lip into his teeth and bit down, shutting his eyes and yanking his glasses from his nose, placing them on the dash. He reopened his blurry eyes, feeling the warmth of his tears fall down his cheeks and the cold of the car’s air sting at the sudden heat of his face. He shook a little with every breath, taking a couple of minutes to calm himself down. In. Out. Over and over to settle the breathing.
“I-I messed up,” Myles finally said, afraid of breaking the silence in the car he had created. Breaking it made him cringe and shrink up a bit. Bass nodded, a small smile approaching his face, as if to tell him to go on. “I gave her my number and I… and I ran away.”
Bass nodded against and raised his chin as he removed his hand from Myles’ shoulder. “What did you run away from? Work? Missy?” His questions burned into Myles and made him start to tear-up again, defeated by the wench in the woodfire.
“I’ve had enough, Bass. I can’t stand her anymore.”
“Didn’t you say you’d report her?”
“Yeah, but she said she’d fire me and I can’t lose my job now. Not with you all in my place and needing my help. I mean,” he slowly drifted from his words, losing his train of thought. “I’d have to move in with Jenny.”
“That’s not so bad. It’s better than living on your own with us.”
“But she wants you all gone just as much as Missy does. Maybe even more…”
Now this was becoming a problem. Everybody wanted them gone, but now more than ever. People had always wanted them to disappear from Myles’ head without mercy to how the boy himself felt about the issue. They had no idea he didn’t understand that other people couldn’t see them until 5th grade when it was getting out of hand.
Bass didn’t realize it, either. He thought he was real, an actual human being in the real world, just enable to touch and manipulate things. He thought it had to do with the amount of God-given talent someone was allowed to have, and Myles had a lot. But then he was sat down with Jenny and their mother.
The tired face of their mother, Kennedy O’Connor, stared down at him with bags under her green eyes and blonde hair pulled away from her face into a maid’s bun. Her hands lay on her thighs and Jennifer, a young little 8th grader, big cheese of middle school, was looking away. She was ashamed of telling him. She didn’t want to be there.
“I can’t lose you,” Bass remembered telling Myles that very night, holding him as he sobbed into the man’s chest, soaking his Pokémon tee-shirt with tears. “Never ever.”
“Never ever,” Bass said to the adult Myles, feeling his stomach turn just looking back to then.
“Never ever,” Myles repeated. “Home we go.”
“Don’t wanna be a fool for you, just another player in this game for two,” the cell phone sang, Justin just beaming about. Myles smacked his hand upon his phone, groggy from his mid-morning nap. He slid it open, then put it to his ear.
“Hello?” he groaned. “Who’s this?”
“This is Catalina Touch from Paper Soldiers.” Myles shot up to a sitting position and grabbed this his glasses. “And this?”
“Myles O’Connor, from Starbucks.”
“Ahh,” she sighed. “I thought so.” Flirting? Was this flirting? This was flirting. Or was it? “So, wanna hang out? Or did you give me your number to go on a date?”
“Which ever you’d um… you’d like,” Myles stammered. “I mean, it’s really up to you. Promise.”
“I think we should go out on a date,” she said. Myles felt his face heat up and got a look from the sudden appearance of Bass.
“I’d like that, actually. A lot.” Bass smiled at Myles’ words and sat on the bed with him, looking out the window. “Where to?”
“Paper Soldiers?” she asked. She started laughing and Myles chuckled, but she actually meant it. “Discounts and I’ll pay.”
“Sounds great. Tonight?”
“Seven?”
“Pick you up?”
“Oakton Apartments?”
“See ya then,” he smiled, then heard her hang up. He set his phone down and smiled brightly at Bass. “I just got a date with a pretty girl,” he laughed. He sank back into his sheets and put his glasses back on the bedside table, then set an alarm for two, quickly falling back to sleep.